


Hand Wash in Cold Water, Air Dry

by saltslimes



Category: Baywatch (2017)
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Sickfic, this is the most generic shit every fic i write is the same fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-17
Updated: 2017-09-17
Packaged: 2018-12-30 17:09:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,400
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12113340
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/saltslimes/pseuds/saltslimes
Summary: Matt is more than aware that it's only a matter of time before he screws up with Baywatch like he screwed up with his last team.





	Hand Wash in Cold Water, Air Dry

**Author's Note:**

> So i guess it's come to this. I watched this movie on a plane and it was bright in the plane so I couldn't see any scenes taking place in the dark. Nonetheless, I decided I would write the fandom's first proper h/c fic, because I am a trailblazer at heart. 
> 
> This isn't betaed, dont sue me.

The one thing that Matt doesn’t really get used to is sand. Sand is in literally everything he eats, wears, or wipes his ass with. Iowa isn’t sandy. There’s dirt. There’s a lot of corn. There was a pool, with a chlorine content always a little higher or lower than it needed to be, and then there was a public pool, where he got to swim laps for the first time.

Once to the end, turn, and back the other way. First it was a game, but then he realized that he was faster than the other kids. Then he realized he was faster than some of the teenagers who swam there. When Matt got his first taste of victory, it felt like a piece of a puzzle falling into place. It felt like the breath you can let out when the glued repair on a porcelain cup holds. Somewhere in his foster parents’ house is a plastic medal with the faux-gold coating chipped off almost entirely. It’s lying in a box shoved into the basement crawlspace (a box labelled Matt). It’s waiting for him to come get it, but even if he remembered that first medal, he wouldn’t be coming. He can barely bring himself to call Jodie (his foster mom).

Being pitied by strangers feels like shit. Being pitied by someone who loves you feels like having your guts compressed to fit into an increasingly small space.

“I heard the community service turned into a real job. That’s amazing,” his foster dad says in an email, and he is able to (mostly) act like that “real job” part doesn’t sting. They were proud at one point. Everyone who played a hand in raising him was. And then he threw all that in the garbage. He was pretty sure that was what he was gonna do with Baywatch. Sometimes he’d wake up and not know why, and the CB would come on, and then it would all come trickling right back in. He’s gonna fuck it up. Only a matter of time.

 

“Matt. Are you listening to me at all?” Stephanie wacked her clipboard on the desk and Matt jumps.

“Huh, what?” he said.

“I said what shift are you working tomorrow? C.J. said you offered to switch with her, did that get worked out?”

“Yeah, I’m doing morning,” Matt said.

“Okay, thanks. Seriously, is there anyone in there? I called your name like three times.” Stephanie scrawled on the clipboard. Matt frowned. He didn’t hear her—in fact, he kind of thought he had fallen asleep for a second.

“I was zoned all the way out,” he said. She rolled her eyes.

“Get your head in the game before your shift.”

“Yeah, I’m gonna go home and sleep.”

“By home, you mean Mitch’s, right?”

“I’m still looking for a place.” He scratched the back of his head. “The prices here are like…”

“I get it,” Stephanie said. But she didn’t sound like she necessarily got it. There was probably more Matt could be doing, instead of still crashing in Mitch’s closet. He was too old to be acting like some vagrant teen. But he’d spend an hour looking at apartment listings and get crushed under the weight of it. Roommates? Landlord? Shit, he was going to fuck all that up big time. He was going to metaphorically or literally vomit-comet his way right back where he started, rolling into the bay with two gold medals and a motorcycle equalling his entire wealth. Except that last week he drove his motorcycle into the bay so he could save a dude who wiped out on his jetski. So now he actually had no motorcycle.

 

Mitch was there when he got home. He was drinking a beer on the couch. He wasn’t watching TV or anything, but he _was_ sitting across from a painting of himself. Matt tried not to draw any conclusions about this.

“Stephanie told me you were zoning out on duty.”

“First of all, I  was not on duty, my shift had ended. Secondly, is everyone on staff a huge narc all the time? Seriously?”

“Baywatch is—”

“A team, a family, I know. Like I said, I wasn’t on duty.”

“Even if you weren’t, when you’re on the beach, you need to—”

“Mitch, I know, okay? Can you just like, relax for one night? I have a huge headache.” As soon as Matt said this, he was rewarded with a questioning eyebrow raise. “I’m seriously dehydrated,” he said. One of the perils of the beach was how easy it was to forget to drink water. Mitch turned his attention back to whatever he was doing, which was staring at either nothing or a picture of himself, and Matt couldn’t decide which was worse. He dug the water bottle he’d taken from the guard tower and forgotten to drink when that suspected art smuggler was spotted up the beach.

“Hey, we saw the guy. Kirkland.”

“Summer already told me about it,” Mitch said.

“Okay. Then I guess I got nothing to offer.”

“I’ll see you at 0600.”

“Wasn’t that like an hour ago? Wait no, you mean six am. That makes more sense.” Rather than respond to this, Mitch just gave Matt a look. “Okay. Bye. I mean ‘night.”

 

It might have been that he had a headache, but the CB sounded louder than usual. He drank the water, but it didn’t really do much. His whole body hurt, once he started thinking about it. He kept debating getting up to dig through his bag and see if he still had loose Tylenol rolling around in there, but he also felt like his bones had turned soft, so he just lay there watching the fish swim around Tiny Mitch until he fell asleep without warning.

When he woke up, he no longer felt like dehydration was the problem. He felt more like he had been pushed through a cheese grater and inexpertly reassembled. Except Matt didn’t think of it in exactly those terms. The process was something more like: fuck, I feel like a bag of garbage that you put around the garbage when it’s too wet and awful to be taken out as is.

It was 5:45, which was not just bad, but colossally bad. He downed half a red-bull from the fridge, but stopped when it became obvious drinking any more was going to lead to projectile vomiting. And then he headed out.

 

 

It was still dark on the beach, that kind of neither-warm-nor cold temperature that Mitch actually liked. He liked the heat, sure, but some of the hours between noon and three could be downright dangerous. The dead of night was usually hoodie weather. But dawn was perfect. None of the sweat but all the freedom.

He folded his arms when he saw Brody jogging down the beach.

“This is 0600 to you?” he said. Brody rolled his eyes.

“I’m like five seconds late.”

“No, you’re fifty seconds late. Fifty seconds when someone could have drowned.”

“There’s literally no one on the beach.” Brody gestured around them at the vast expanse of empty sand.

“That may be. But we have a duty to fulfil.”

“I know, okay. I’m sorry. It won’t happen again.”

“It better not,” Mitch said.

As it happened, it was actually a slow morning. There was a food truck fest going on downtown, so it took some time for the crowd to trickle in, and when they did, there were a lot more sunbathers than people swimming.

Brody grabbed a kid who was drifting too far from his mom, and Mitch apprehended a sand grifter. Then, an hour or so later, some kids skateboarded off the pier.

Whenever Mitch hit the water, everything kind of shut off. It had been happening ever since he was a kid, and he had trouble describing it. Sometimes on land he felt like he was making the wrong choice, fucking stuff up, whatever. In the water, things were obvious. Which way to swim, when to come up for air, who to grab first. All that shit just fell right into place.

He grabbed the kid closest to him and hauled for the surface. Brody was below him getting the other kid. Her foot was stuck in the rocks, but Mitch needed to get the kid to air. He opted to put a little faith in Brody.

On the shore, he laid the kid down. He started choking up water on his own. Mitch helped him sit up.

“Hey, you’re gonna be good.”

“She hit her head,” he heard from behind him. “And she’s not breathing.” Well fuck. He turned and was on his feet in an instant, helping Brody lay the girl down and open her airways.

“Hands out of the way,” he said, and Brody let go and rocked back on his heels so Mitch could start CPR. Moments like this always censored themselves out of Mitch’s memory. When he thought back to saves, he would think about hitting the water, and then being thanked by grateful family members and would be drownees. This part, the tense horror of feeling a person between living and dead under your hands, that was always absent when he tried to recall it. But his hands remembered.

1, 2, 3, 4, shit, come on, 5, 6—and then she was choking up water, coughing and crying. Mitch grinned.

“Another save,” he said. And then Brody keeled over. By now a crowd had gathered.

“Is that dude okay?” someone yelled.

“One of the lifeguards just passed out,” someone else cried. Mitch leaned over and pressed two fingers to Brody’s neck. His own heart was hammering in his ears. What the fuck? Brody’s heart was beating, at any rate (actually it was kind of fast). And he felt hot, like more hot than just out-in-the-LA-sun hot.

Mitch smacked him.

“Nhhgh. What?” Brody mumbled.

“Hey. You just fainted on the beach,” Mitch said.

“Total Ronnie movie,” Ronnie said.

“Fuck,” Brody said.

“Can you stand?” Mitch asked. He was already pulling Brody to his feet.

“Yeah, of course,” Brody said. But as soon as he was vertical he wavered so hard that Mitch had to put a hand on his chest to keep him from dropping again.

“Come on,” he said, and hauled Brody down the beach with a hand fisted in the back of his shirt.

“Can we fucking—slow down?” Brody whined.

“When we get where we’re going you’re getting the lecture of your life.”

“Actually can you just leave me here? I’m like fine.”

“You’re _not_ fine.”

“What’s the lecture even going to be about? I saved the kid.”

“Idiot. You can’t guard sick. You should have said something. Last _night_ preferably. You know why we have rules? Because otherwise—”

“People die. I know. I am actually—” before Brody could finish whatever that thought was, he stumbled in the sand and seemingly his legs just gave out under him. He ended up on his knees in the sand, sort of looking like he sat down casually to do some yoga or something. Mitch crouched beside him.

“We have two options here, and you’re not gonna like either,” he said.

“I am. Not,” Brody mumbled.

“Either you walk off the beach with me.”

“My legs don’t work right now.”

“Or I gotta carry you off.”

“Actually, they probably work fine. Give me a second.”

“Brody, I’m serious you should have said something.”

“I didn’t realize I was like, under attack by some death plague until… I don’t know. Ten minutes ago.”

“You think I’m some dumbass for some reason, who can’t see through incredibly obvious lies.” Mitch heaved Brody back to his feet. They paused for a moment while Brody attempted to get his bearings.

The stairs were an ordeal, but they managed to get into the house. Mitch dumped Brody on the couch, mostly because it was closer than his storage room.

“If you puke on my couch, you can sleep outside,” he said.

“Haha. Fuck. Fuck, Mitch.”

“What are you bitching about now?” Mitch dropped into the seat opposite Brody, who was pushing his face into the couch cushions, one arm thrown up to cover the rest of his head.

“I’m just… I know I’m fucking it all up.”

“Yeah. But you’re trying.”

“Hah. That’s some shit you say to kids who are never gonna win anything in their life.”

“I bet someone said it to you at some point though,” Mitch said, without missing a beat. Brody lifted the arm. His face was flushed with fever, eyes glassy and skin slick with sweat.

“Yeah. They did actually.”

“And?”

“And what?”

“And look at you now.”

“Now I’m a drifter who fucks up at work and sleeps on his boss’ couch?”

“Now you’re an Olympic gold medalist. Now you’re part of a team that saves lives.” Mitch got up and headed to the fridge to retrieve a Gatorade.

“I passed out on the beach and everyone saw.”

“Yeah.”

“This kind of shit is supposed to happen to Ronnie.”

“Yup. Time to get used to it. Next time, tell Steph you’re sick.” He tossed Brody the Gatorade. It hit him in the chest and rolled onto the floor. “Yikes.”

“Ughhg,” Brody said. Mitch came over and put a hand on his forehead.

“Dude fuck off with that,” Brody said, attempting to swat him away. It was like being tapped by a kitten.

“You’re seriously an idiot, you know that?”

“I guess. Why are you doing this?”

“Because you’re part of the team. We look out for each other,” Mitch said. He cracked the Gatorade open and handed it to Brody.

“Shit man. You’re such a weird huge sappy ocean man.”

“Yeah. And you’re totally stuck with me.”

 

 

There’s something about sand. It seriously gets everywhere. Brody woke up at an hour he wanted to called 0600, but it was actually closer to 1900 hours, and he had sand in his mouth (somehow) and in his trunks (obviously) and there was a blanket on top of him. And Mitch, Mitch of all people was asleep in the chair beside him, head lolled back and mouth open. He was snoring. Brody watched him for a minute, totally awestruck. Then he threw a pillow at him.

Being pitied, in general terms, feels pretty awful. But being cared about is pretty okay.

**Author's Note:**

> If you noticed that the characters like, generally suck, and are assholes, this is because I wanted to stay as close to canon as possible. Thanks have a good night.


End file.
